


Names, Rings, and Under Things

by hollow_echos



Category: Kingkiller Chronicles - Patrick Rothfuss
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 21:46:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollow_echos/pseuds/hollow_echos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Names hold power. Here is the tale of how a young woman donned the name 'Auri.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Names, Rings, and Under Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laurel_crown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurel_crown/gifts).



Names held power. That was why students went to the University, was it not? There were the students who would go into alchemy, sympathy, or artificing. They would serve perfectly useful functions within the empire: making enchanted trinkets for the wealthy, and more useful things like knives and swords that would never lose their edge for the more military minded. Then there were the handful of students who would go on to achieve great heights, gaining notoriety and fame for their mastery of the very forces of nature, power gained through knowledge, knowledge of a true name.

 

She had had another name once, a name given to her by her parents. A name they would holler out into the fields in the evening, beckoning her home from her wanderings in the fields chasing after the many creatures that roamed the surrounding lands. A name they whispered in her ear each time they hugged her goodnight and tucked her in.

 

That child with that name was long gone, though, and time is wasted dwelling on times past.

 

She was a student at the University for a spell.  She watched classmates elevated to arcanists; she watched them don rings of stone, air, iron, and fire for their toils. There was jealousy, of course, for their perceived successes. She carried it around like a bucket of ashes in the pit of her stomach. Her sleeping mind always seemed to slumber, never waking, never whispering a True Name within her mind.

 

Jealousy is a vice that spurns its bearers for their folly; it was a hard-learned lesson.

 

It wasn’t her only mistake. Perhaps she shouldn’t have taken drink at Eolian that night, but oh, how she loved the way the music rippled outward from the stage and hushed the audience to entrancement.  Take drink that evening she did.

 

Perhaps she should’ve taken the offer of escort from the gentleman who had bought her a drink. With all of his finery, she looked at him and saw him for what he might have been, a wolf draped in fine silks was still a wolf at the end of the day, so she refused his offer and made off into the night on her own.

 

She took a shortcut, a well-known avenue to students who had little time to waste, places to be and studies to complete. Perhaps that was also a folly, but it was her burden to bear.

 

She had taken just enough drink to give the evening a warm, gentle glow, to dull the night’s harsh edges to something far softer.

 

A steely grip on her arm spun her around and scattered to the wind whatever thoughts she might have been pondering. A fist struck the side of her head, her vision blacking for a moment as she fell to the ground. There was a figure above her, a bright full moon silhouetting his frame. She couldn’t see his face beneath the hood of a cloak, though she could feel his boot as it collided with her ribs, the air rushing out of her lungs in a pitiful gasp.

 

He raised his foot yet again; she averted her gaze, not wanting to watch the strike as it came. Instead, she looked upward. The moon seemed so lonely in the sky, its glow outshining the stars. She wondered if they were jealous.

 

At that moment a pressure appeared between her ears, more painful even than a fist or a boot. She wailed, clutching at her skull. It would break her, this pressure; split her skull right in two and whatever was clawing to get out would escape. Her mouth opened of its own accord, forming words in a strange tongue.  The moon flashed blue; the very earth beneath her began to shake, obeying whatever secret demands the moon had made. The man above her lost his balance, toppling to the ground beside her. She scrambled across the ground to get away.

 

There was a sickening groan, a spray of dust, and the alley’s wall began to fall in on itself, chunks falling like an angry hail. A stone struck her shoulder; a boulder flattened the man beside her. She saw blood; she heard the break of bone. She ran.

 

Screams and mournful wails chased her through the night. A fire consuming a nearby building made her shadow dance red against the wall. This destruction had a name, a name she dared not speak again. The True Name of the moon, she knew, she had done this.

 

She fled the gaze of the moon; it followed her, taunted her. It called out to her, the lonely moon searching for a compatriot. It made her shudder. She fled to a land below the world, under the things that roamed beneath the sun by day and moon by night. She shed her old life and old name like a well worn cloak.

 

Names had power and purpose, names held danger like a pool of water cupped in a person’s hands; some was bound to dribble out. She knew she was to fashion a ring, it was her penance, perhaps, but to fashion a ring of the moon seemed an impossible feat, the moon was so very far away. She found a well-worn ring of wood in her explorations and decided it would suffice.

 

She found a new life below in a long-forgotten world where ancient mysteries slept and few people dared to tread. She carved a place for herself in this new realm; she made new friends with a family of mice who visited her home each night for scraps. She stood watch over a brave mother’s owlings when the bird of prey took flight to hunt beneath the steely gaze of the moon.

 

It was as those owlings grew proper feathers and were pushed out of the nest one by one under their mother’s watchful gaze when she finally worked up the courage to venture above once more. It was a blessedly cloudy night, the moon hidden behind a grey shroud when they made their journey.

 

The owlings carved crooked paths in the sky above; she slunk within the shadows on the ground below, trailing in their wake. Their company parted when she heard the mournful song of a solitary lute echo through the night. She was drawn toward the noise like bees to wine, circling in closer and closer until she was perched in a tree just below the roof where the musician played. She dared not creep closer; the music alone was gift enough for this evening.

 

It wasn’t to be her last trip above things. Over weeks she grew to know the man by his music, his song telling tales of adventures had and battles lost, of jubilations and tribulations. She trusted this musician, his soul was a good one.

 

She introduced herself to the man, or rather, him to her. He beckoned her out one night, “I know you’re there, not just tonight, but every night. I share my music, asking nothing in return but your company. Please, come out. I’d like very much to meet you.”

 

It was the ‘please’ that did it. A man of music and manners, it was enough to tip the scale. She climbed up onto the roof from her tree perch.

 

“I’m Kvothe, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Is there a name I can call you by? I would rather us friends, than strangers,” he said.

 

She shuddered. Names held power, names made threats. She bolted.

 

The moon had waxed and waned and stepped away from his nightly vigil in the sky before she dared venture out to listen again. He had spread his cloak on the ground as a blanket and set out two placings. The aroma of honey bread danced in the air.

 

“I’ve brought food and drink enough for the both of us if you’d care to join me. I’m sorry if I frightened you on our last meeting,” he spoke low and soft like wind through the grass.

 

Her rumbling belly won out. She slunk toward him slowly, cautiously, before seating herself at the edge of his cloak, not quite on it (indeed, it was his) but close enough to reach the food. There was no more conversation that night, just food and drink and fine music.

 

Her old name was gone, but in time she gained a new one. Auri, he called her, because he couldn’t call her nothing at all. She liked the way it rolled off the tongue. She accepted this gift, this name, and so Auri she became.

 

They met by starlight, never moon light, or by the faint shine of the moon behind the clouds where its stare couldn’t find her. She had a new name, and a new friend. She decided it was time to give him a gift in return.

 

“What have you brought for me tonight?” he asked.

 

Auri grinned. “What have you brought for me?”

 

“I brought some honey wine,” he said, holding the bottle in the air high enough to reflect the star light.

 

“Why this is a princely gift. Think of all the tipsy bees. What’s in it?”

 

“Sunlight, a smile, and a question. The question is at the bottom.”

 

“A heavy question, then,” Auri replied. She slipped the ring from where she had tucked it into her sash. She rolled it between her fingers for a moment before offering it to him. “I brought you a ring,” she whispered, her voice almost breaking. “It keeps secrets.”

 

He held it to his ear as if begging it to tell her secret, what she’d done, who’d she named and called down the wrath of  that night.

 

“It doesn’t tell them, it keeps them,” Auri replied. She reached for the ring in his palm, sliding it onto his finger and skating back a step, head cocked as she kept her gaze fixed on his hand and the ring.

 

“It fits,” he said, surprised.

 

“They are your secrets, who else would it fit?”

 

Auri brushed a pale wisp of hair out of her eyes; they sparkled in the starlight in a way he’d never seen them shine before. She danced in a circle, light footed and quick on her feet as if a leaden weight had been lifted off her chest. Perhaps it had.

 

“Wear it well, that ring will keep your secrets now and never tell,” she said in a somber tone.

 

Immediately after, her stony expression melted away, the corners of her eyes creasing from her wide grin. “I was wondering if you would join me for dinner tonight, Kvothe. I have brought apples and eggs. I can also offer a lovely honey wine.”

 

“I’d love to share dinner with you, Auri,” he replied.

 

And share they did. They drank wine from thimbles and laid back and counted the stars. There was music and feast and merriment the likes of which she hadn’t partook in since she had called down the moon. Her secrets were gone, let loose on the wind and the ring gifted to Kvothe. Let the arcanist keep the names he had and the ones he’d go on to collect on his wanderings. His fingers could bear the rings. From him, she’d steal just one name, Auri. A new name and a new life, those she claimed for herself.

 

-The End-


End file.
